Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Reed has his moment
Have Heat unearthed another quality big man?
SACRAMENTO — When Willie Reed approaches the scorers’ table, you half-expect Juwan Howard to be alongside. Beyond the games themselves, the Miami Heat center and assistant coach are practically inseparable.
For both, it all had been about building toward a game like the one Tuesday night against the Phoenix Suns, when, in the injury absence of Hassan Whiteside, Reed established career highs with 22 points and 16 rebounds.
“It all came in the exact ways that me and Coach Howard worked,” Reed said of the performance, as the Heat turned their attention to Wednesday night against the Sacramento Kings, the third stop on this six-game trip. “Every day we work on the same stuff, and that’s exactly how I got my points, with offensive rebounding and being in control off the glass.”
Before Tuesday, Reed’s career highs had been 14 points against the Minnesota Timberwolves last season while with the Brooklyn Nets and 11 rebounds against the Cleveland Cavaliers on Dec. 9. He became just the third player in the Heat’s 29 seasons to record a 20-15 double-double within his first 57 career games, joining Whiteside and Kurt Thomas.
“Every single day,” coach Erik Spoelstra said, “all he does is work with Juwan to try to get better, work at his craft to earn his minutes, earn his opportunities. And what he always has had is the effort and the motor.
“But him working at other things now makes him more skilled on both ends of the court. So when somebody puts in that much time, you’re very happy for him when he’s able to produce like that.”
Reed said it is not a case of attempting to emulate Whiteside, who remains in South Florida due to a right retinal bruise suffered Friday when he was inadvertently poked in the eye by Jae Crowder during a loss to the Boston Celtics
“Just trying to be the best Willie Reed I could be, that’s all,” Reed said, having made only two previous career NBA starts before stepping in for Whiteside.
Reed said it hasn’t been a matter of trying to make more of a case for himself statistically, although his performance Tuesday was just his second career double-double.
“I don’t think it was anything really different,” he said. “I felt I played just as hard as I played last game or any other game this year. The numbers just happened to come.”
As with Whiteside, it was a circuitous path to the NBA for Reed. He initially signed to play in Spain after he wasn’t drafted out of Saint Louis in 2011, but instead he spent his first three professional seasons in the D-League. Like Whiteside, he had a tryout with the Kings but did not get his NBA break until spending last season with the Nets after he was signed away from the Heat’s 2015 summer-league team.
Then, this summer, Reed signed a two-year deal with the Heat at the veteran minimum, with the second season a player option. And then he got to work on the practice court at AmericanAirlines Arena, shadowed by Howard.
“He works hard. He listens. He focuses,” said Heat captain Udonis Haslem, who also has taken Reed, 26, under his wing. “He comes to play every night with effort and energy. And when you get a guy with that size and that length, that plays with effort and energy, in this league you can put up those kind of numbers.”
Having also toiled in the D-League until getting his own break with the Heat, rookie swingman Rodney McGruder said Reed’s game Tuesday was months in the making.
“Willie puts the work in,” he said. “When we played in August, when we played in open gym, you saw what he has capable of.”
On Tuesday, with Spoelstra’s options limited with only eight healthy players, Reed stayed true to himself, while also exposing previously unseen elements of his game.
“I’m a shot-blocker. I’m a rebounder, defender. But I can also play offense,” Reed said. “And I’m just continuously working on that to make sure my offensive game gets better and better.”